Cell phone plan for Canada

[jhayes]

This question is for the folks that traveled through Canada this year. What affordable phone plans did you use? Verizon wants $5.00 per day, per device, on top of your regular plan. I have not checked AT&T but expect it to be about the same. In the 90's we made numerous trips in Canada and up to Alaska, and, at the time, we paid $10-$15 per month plus our regular bill. Now they are getting a little greedy. We are planning go to Alaska again in 2018 so, we are looking for what  available. Any suggestions?

Jerry

[Al F]

I am guessing you don't have a fairly large data plan for your Verizon account.  If you have the extra large (18G I think) or the unlimited plan you get free data & voice in Canada & Mexico. 

That is what we used in 2016 and what I believe a number of people on this forum did in 2017. 

When we began our trip in early May 2016 we paid a couple of dollar per device per day.  However the "day" was for 24 hours from the time you first connect the device.  We left one of our phones off and just used the other phone.  If we didn't need to use the phone that day, or were out of cell range no charge.

[SWharton]

My Cricket Plan includes Canada and Mexico a part of the plan.

[Chad Heiser]

My ATT unlimited plan includes Canada and Mexico at no extra charge.  We took a cruise to Alaska in June this year and used our phones in Canada and Alaska with no additional charges.

[SWharton]

Cricket is an ATT MVNO.

[pethier]

I live in Minnesota.  I have a 2-gig plan from Verizon for my I-phone.  Any day I use the phone in Canada, they will charge me two bucks.  That's for the whole day, whether I make one phone call to stare at maps on the internet all day.  I consider that a good deal.  When I was in Quebec chasing my roots, I was on AT&T, and I got phone charges of more than a hundred bucks for less than a week of use.

[jhayes]

pethier, 

Yea, we experienced the same kind of charges when we were went to Nova Scotia/Newfoundland in 2015 from Verizon. The first month up there we had over $300.00 in data and phone charges in addition to the regular monthly charges. Verizon finally issued a $200 credit because they cannot pull up the actual usage charges from the Canadian phone system. They said that they suspected from other complaints that the Canadian service was doubling/tripling the charges passed on to the US. We have a 10Gb data plan and unlimited phone and data. I will probably temporarily raise the data to 20Gb but I still don't like the $5.00 a day extra for using the phone. 

Does anyone know if you can buy a prepaid "burner" phone in Canada that can be used to call the US? 

Jerry